The Bird in the Tree

by Elizabeth Goudge

  The quiet of the old church seemed filled with the stately loveliness of the familiar prayers as he repeated them, yet this morning, beyond the slow fall of his words and the procession of his pleading thoughts, he was unusually conscious of the sights and sounds and scents that he knew so well. Though his back was to his church he could see in imagination the slanting beams of light falling through the windows, the dust motes dancing in them, the upward leap of the pillars to the lovely curve of the arches above and the dusky gloom of the roof over his head. He could hear the robin’s chirp and the flutter of its wings, the soft swish of a woman’s skirts as she knelt and a cock crowing somewhere in the village. The smell of must and damp was mingled pleasantly with the scent of the late roses in the altar vases and the very faint and lovely scent of verbena. Verbena? When he turned round he knew why all his senses were so unusually sharpened. Instead of Margaret Lucilla was here. Such was his love for his mother that when she was near him he was always more wide awake than usual to the beauty of familiar things.

  Yet he felt a pang of sorrow at seeing her there. She always came in the village taxi on Sundays but on weekdays she did not usually feel justified in running to the expense. If today she had felt justified it must be because her mind was unusually troubled. He knew that she was taking this business of Nadine and David very much to heart.

  When the service was over and he came out of the vestry he found her standing on the moss-grown path by Aramante’s grave. “I am having breakfast with you, dear,” she said.

  She always had breakfast with him after she had been to mass. Sunday breakfast was one of the highlights of his week.

  “That’s fine, Mother,” he said. “Only I don’t know if there’s anything for breakfast that you’ll like to eat. We didn’t expect you, you know.”

  “Uninvited guests know what to expect upon your table, Hilary,” said Lucilla sweetly. “Leather . . . But I’ve not come for nourishment but to enjoy your company, darling.”

  Hilary laughed as he slipped his arm into hers and walked with her under the yews to the lych gate. He was a little suspicious of her sweetness. He rather thought she wanted to give him a scolding. He knew that he had exasperated her by the calm with which he had taken the news of David’s delinquency, and that he had further outraged her by doing nothing at all about it. The fact was that he didn’t know what to do about it, and when Hilary didn’t know what to do about anything he waited in perfect placidity until he did. This he called “waiting upon God.” Lucilla called it “Hilary’s dreadful inertia.”

  Seated in the high, bare dining-room of the Vicarage, hideous with oilcloth and ecclesiastical pitch-pine woodwork, regarding the table spread with leathery toast, leathery cold ham and tea that had not been made with boiling water, Lucilla sighed in a great depression of spirits. Hilary’s Vicarage always depressed her. It was so cold, so bare, so ugly, and she could see no reason why godliness should go hand in hand with leathery food.

  “If only you had married, Hilary,” she sighed.

  “Why, Mother?” asked Hilary, drinking a cup of tepid tea with every appearance of enjoyment.

  “This ham,” said Lucilla, regarding it with a revolted eye. “It has a very odd green tinge. Your old Mary is the worst housekeeper in the world. No wife would allow you to eat ham like this.”

  “Shall I ring for an egg for you?” asked Hilary, worried.

  “No, dear, don’t bother. It would probably be a curate’s one and I don’t like that sort. I’ll just have toast. . . . You should have married, Hilary.”

  “If I had, Mother,” said Hilary, “you would have taken a great dislike to her.”

  “I daresay, dear,” Lucilla agreed. “I dislike the two daughters-in-law I have quite intensely. Laura is so dreadfully unworldly and Nadine so terribly worldly. It’s so hard to strike the happy medium with a daughter-in-law.”

  “And then, Mother,” said Hilary, smiling, “I’ve never met a women who could hold a candle to you. A man should love his wife more than his mother, and that’s a thing I could never do.”

  Lucilla was more annoyed than mollified. “Hilary,” she announced, “you are one of those cowardly men who shelter behind the love of a mother from the bother of supporting a wife. Had you married, and possessed even the most elementary knowledge of women, you would have had the courage and intelligence to bring Nadine to a sense of her duty.”

  Hilary lay back in his chair and laughed delightedly. So she wanted him to tackle Nadine. He had thought there was more in her desire for his company than had met the eye.

  “I don’t know why you’re laughing,” said Lucilla miserably. “I am most dreadfully unhappy.”

  “Poor Mother,” said Hilary, instantly sobered. “It would do no good for me to talk to Nadine, darling. I shouldn’t in the least know what to say. I’m always a tongue-tied idiot with women of her type. I don’t understand them.”

  “You shirk women,” said Lucilla severely. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. What’s a parson for but to cope with silly women?”

  “I don’t shirk all women,” said Hilary with pardonable pride. “Have you ever known me drop a female infant when baptizing her, scream she never so loudly, or fail to hale a young mother off to be churched, no matter how reluctant?”

  “Don’t be flippant, Hilary,” said Lucilla. “It is your duty as a priest to help me in this miserable affair of David and Nadine.”

  “I know,” said Hilary seriously. “And I mean to have a talk with David. But I don’t want to force things. I’m just waiting until an opportunity arises easily and naturally, and until I am clearer in my mind as to what I should say.”

  “Your mind always takes such an age to clear, dear,” mourned Lucilla.

  “I know,” agreed Hilary placidly, putting four lumps of sugar into his second cup of tea. “It’s a slow mind. And guidance never comes to me other than gradually.”

  “So gradually, dear,” sighed Lucilla, “that when at last it does come the thing that you wanted to be guided about has long ago passed into the realm of legend.”

  Hilary stirred his tea serenely and his mild brown eyes beamed affectionately upon his mother. Lucilla pushed her untouched plate impatiently away and sighed. Hilary was being hopeless as usual. In spite of his gentleness she found him quite the most difficult of her children to bend her will. . . . And yet she relied upon him more than upon the others; which was odd, because he did not always agree with her, and Lucilla, like everyone else, seldom sought advice unless she was sure it would bolster up the conclusion she had herself already come to.

  “You are the person to talk to Nadine, Mother,” said Hilary.

  “I mean to, dear. I am going to talk to her and David today. But I doubt if I shall do much good with Nadine. A woman of her type only listens to men. That’s why I wanted you to talk to her too.”

  “She is more likely to be touched by you than by me,” said Hilary with conviction. “You will be able to speak to her out of your own experience of great love and great loss, the kind of love and loss of which I know nothing. Your experience, long ago when we were young, was so like hers. And also, though I don’t think you know it, she is extremely fond of you.”

  Lucilla started and gazed in astonishment at her son, but he did not meet her eyes. “Great love and great loss long ago.” But Hilary could not know anything about it. He had only been a little boy at the time. Perhaps, dear simple soul, he took it for granted that she had loved his father as David loved Nadine. Her strained figure relaxed.

  “Of course, you mean your father,” she said.

  Hilary looked up and smiled at her. “No, not Father,” he said. “Tolerant affection was the deepest emotion you ever felt for poor Father.”

  Lucilla got up and said in a trembling voice that she thought she ought to be going. He was startling her so much that she felt incapable of sitting still where s
he was or of staying longer in his company. Soon, she thought, he would be telling her of her inmost thoughts, those half-formed things that were hardly clear even to herself. And this was her slow, her obtuse Hilary!

  “But at least you’re wrong about Nadine liking me,” she gasped, feeling like a blind woman for her bag and sunshade. “She can’t bear me.”

  “She’s very fond of you,” insisted Hilary. “I’ll come with you down to the gate, Mother.”

  In the shelter of a lilac bush he took her in his arms. “You see,” he explained, “children always know more than their parents think they do. I so often saw you with him, and I happened to be in the garden that evening when you came home again. I did not understand then, of course, but later, putting two and two together, I did. I have always loved and reverenced you for the decision you made. If I were you, Mother, I should tell Nadine.”

  “I never meant to tell a living soul,” whispered Lucilla, her face hidden against his shoulder. “I thought no one knew except, of course, Ellen.”

  “Tell Nadine,” insisted Hilary.

  “Not Nadine,” exclaimed Lucilla. “David, perhaps, but of all people, not Nadine! I don’t like Nadine. It’s unbearable to have to tell one’s most private affairs to a woman one dislikes.”

  “Especially Nadine,” insisted Hilary, “because she is so fond of you.”

  The purr of David’s car, coming to bring the boys to their lessons and drive Lucilla back to Damerosehay, was heard in the lane.

  “Well, Hilary,” said Lucilla, withdrawing herself tremblingly from her son’s arms, “you’ve astonished me. All these years you’ve known more about me than any of my children. You’re far cleverer than I thought you were. Far, far cleverer. The most astute of all my children. . . . But I still think you’re wrong about Nadine liking me.”

  “You’ll take my advice?” asked Hilary.

  “Must I?” pleaded Lucilla. “I should so hate to tell Nadine.”

  “I think you must,” said Hilary. “That old story of yours is the best weapon that you have.”

  “Very well,” said Lucilla meekly.

  And then David and the two little boys appeared upon the garden path. David looked a little troubled, Tommy was white under his sunburn and Ben looked not quite himself.

  “What’s the matter with Tommy?” demanded Lucilla in instant anxiety.

  “It’s nothing,” David hastened to assure her. “It’s just that he hasn’t been very well this morning.”

  “It was a haddock morning,” explained Ben.

  “And you were out,” said Tommy resentfully to his grandmother. “You ought to have told me you were going out, Grandmother. It’s all been wasted because you were out.”

  “What’s been wasted?” asked the puzzled Lucilla.

  “The haddock and Tommy being sick,” said Ben. “He thumped himself on his front and was sick, the way David taught him, but you were out and couldn’t give him permission to stay home from lessons, and we couldn’t find Mother, and Ellen was cross and said he’d done it on purpose and must come. It’s been hard on Tommy. You really ought to tell us when you’re going out, Grandmother.”

  Lucilla, outraged, was no longer interested in Tommy’s pallor. “You’re a horrid little boy, Tommy,” she said. “And you, David, you’re not much better,” and she swept indignantly to the garden gate.

  “But Ben?” asked Hilary, looking at his favourite nephew’s strained face with considerable concern. “Did you part with the haddock, too, Ben?”

  “No,” said Ben sullenly, and kicked at a stone on the garden path.

  David, still looking worried, made a half movement towards Ben, but Ben drew away from him towards Hilary. David followed Lucilla out to his car.

  — 2 —

  Hilary conducted his two young nephews sternly indoors. He thought that they were considerably spoilt by all the women at Damerosehay and that but for his instruction and discipline their characters would have stood a poor chance. He was fond of them and he did not grudge the hours that he gave to them, even though it meant getting behindhand with parish business and staying up half the night to get it done. He was also extremely fond of his brother George, whom he considered the bravest and the stupidest man he had ever met, and he was anxious that George’s sons should grow up to give him pride and joy and make up to him for the tragic disappointment of his marriage. With this end in view he thrust Latin verbs down the little boys’ throats with a zeal that was almost ruthless, and kept in the drawer of his desk a very thin ruler that was not infrequently used for purposes of discipline. Hilary was rather an old-fashioned educationalist. He believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, and that it does not much matter what you teach a boy so long as he hates it enough.

  Yet his nephews were exceedingly attached to him, and Ben liked his lessons. Tommy didn’t, but then no matter who had taught him Tommy would have disliked instruction of an academic type. His mind was far from academic.

  Hilary sat on one side of his dining-room table, from which the debris of breakfast had been cleared, and his nephews sat facing him upon the other, twisting their legs about their chairs and breathing heavily, and for half-an-hour instruction followed its normal course. Then Tommy spoke.

  “May I go and lie down in the study, Uncle Hilary?”

  “Certainly not,” said Hilary.

  “But I don’t feel well inside,” complained Tommy.

  “That’s your fault,” said Hilary. “Your indisposition was self-induced and you are now bearing the consequences of your own action. Parse that sentence again.”

  Work continued for another half-hour and then Ben said, “Uncle Hilary, please may I lie down?”

  Hilary gave one keen look at his nephew’s face, then without a word picked him up and carried him to the study. He laid him on the shabby old sofa, covered him with a rug and went to the kitchen to tell his housekeeper to take Master Ben some hot milk. Then he went back to Tommy who had, as was only to be expected, disappeared.

  But Hilary knew Tommy’s habits and ran him to earth in the little room where the apples were stored. “I didn’t expect you back so soon,” said Tommy with bulging cheeks. “You’ve been jolly quick tucking up Ben.”

  Hilary made no reply but haled him back to the dining-room and made strenuous use of the ruler.

  After that his heart warmed to his nephew for Tommy neither cried nor made excuses. Nor did he say, as he very well might, that Ben had received favoured treatment. He knew that Ben really felt bad, while his indisposition had vanished the moment he scurried down the passage and smelt the apples. Tommy, though wily, was honest.

  “You took that well, Tommy,” said Hilary, replacing the ruler and looking a little ruefully at Tommy’s scarlet, smarting little palms. “Now you’ll learn those verbs while I go and see what’s the matter with Ben.”

  “Could I learn them in the linen cupboard with the cistern?” asked Tommy.

  Hilary agreed. He was unable to understand Tommy’s passion for the cistern but he felt that his honesty and courage merited reward. “But don’t mess about with the linen,” he cautioned.

  Tommy vouchsafed no reply, but made a hasty exit.

  Hilary found Ben lying exactly as he had left him, flat on his back staring at the ceiling. His milk was untouched beside him.

  “Drink up your milk,” said Hilary kindly.

  “I don’t want it,” said Ben.

  “Nonsense,” said Hilary. “Do as I tell you.”

  Ben sat up and drank some of it obediently.

  “Why did you turn queer like that?” asked Hilary. “Didn’t you have any breakfast?”

  “No,” said Ben.

  “Why not?”

  “It wouldn’t go down,” said Ben. “I tried, but it wouldn’t. Haddock doesn’t if you feel upset. It’s very thick and woolly in one’s mou
th, haddock is.”

  Hilary sat down on the sofa and put an arm round him. Sharp, quick tremors were passing through the little boy’s body. Never had there been a child so exactly like a thoroughbred dog. Hilary was deeply distressed. “Ben,” he commanded, “tell me what’s worrying you.”

  Ben shook his head.

  “Try, Ben.”

  “I can’t,” said Ben. “You see, I wasn’t meant to see it and so I can’t tell what I saw.”

  “I think you could tell me,” said Hilary. “You see, I am a priest, and you can say things to priests that you would not say to other people because it is part of their duty never to repeat the things that are said to them.”

  “You mean it’s as safe as saying things to God?” asked Ben.

  “Quite as safe,” said Hilary, and was immediately overtaken by the almost overwhelming sense of humility that was always his in the confessional. “As . . . God.” Truly a priest carried the weight of an almost insupportable dignity. No wonder if staggering beneath it he appeared sometimes completely ridiculous in the eyes of the world. Atlas no doubt looked very silly, and Saint Christopher staggering through the whirling water bearing the Christ Child with him.

  “It was in the wild garden,” said Ben, with another of his thoroughbred shivers. “I went out there before breakfast, like I always do, and David and Mother were there under Methuselah, and David was kissing Mother. I ran away again and they didn’t see me.”

  “There is no reason why David shouldn’t kiss your Mother,” said Hilary evenly. “He is her nephew. Nephews always kiss their aunts. Don’t you ever kiss Aunt Margaret?”

  “But he wasn’t kissing her that way,” said Ben. “He was kissing her the other way.”

  “What other way?”

  “Like Alf kisses Jill. I saw them at the back door once and when I asked Jill why they kissed like that, going on so long and with Jill sort of disappearing into Alf, she said it was because they were going to be married. . . . Uncle Hilary, could Mother marry David now that she doesn’t live with Father any more?”